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The temple, located not far from the
city of Luxor, had been explored in the early 20th century but not
entirely. It was subsequently abandoned by archaeologists in 1938, and was
covered by sand and forgotten for seventy years.

We’re very familiar with Thutmose
III, because we stumbled across him while researching our novel, Obelisk Seven.

He plays an important role in our
novel, as this extract about the London obelisk shows:

"There she is," Gliffy said proudly.

"Cleopatra's Needle. Made by old T3 - Pharaoh Thutmose III."

Before them stood the seventy foot tall obelisk, mounted on a granite pad
thrust out from the side of the Thames Embankment, into the river itself.

Stairs ran from the top of the pad down to the river below.

Two seven-ton bronze guardian
sphinxes, nineteen feet long, flanked the obelisk; each had a sphinx head on
top of a muscular lion's body.

“This beauty stood for about a
thousand years in the desert before it was toppled by the Persians in 500 BC,”
Gliffy explained.

“And then it was buried for about five hundred years, before the Romans
dug it up and moved it to Alexandria, where they raised it on the seashore.
There it stood for 1300 years, before falling in an earthquake in 1300 AD. It
was buried in the sand for another five hundred years, before being dug up once
more and sent to London.”

“Buried twice, for a thousand years,” Nick whispered, awed.

“And now we want to ferret out its secret: does it also send out
signals?” Kate said softly.

Gliffy was scanning the street.

"I think the best bet for our scanners is in the trees. The angle
between the two scanners would be a bit wide, but it should work?"

Lorenzo glanced down the sidewalk and at the obelisk, mentally
calculating angles, and nodded.

"It is enough."

"Good, that's what we will do, then," Gliffy decided.

He turned to Kate.

"The lesson continueth," he said with relish, hooking an arm
through Kate’s and Nick’sand starting a
march to the obelisk.

"This beauty is called Cleopatra's Needle, but I think they got the
wrong guy. It's got nothing to do with Cleopatra, really," he said.
"Cleopatra came along a long time later. There is perhaps a connection
between Cleopatra and this obelisk, right up to our times, though."

He rapped a knuckle on the stone step of the base.

"The real person this obelisk should have been named after is
Thutmose III, who had it made. When the obelisk was moved to London somebody
called it Cleopatra's Needle and the name stuck to it."

He explained how Cleopatra became pharaoh of Egypt in 47 BC. Julius
Caesar spent a few months in Egypt, and after he and Cleopatra became lovers a
son was born - their dream was of a new empire, being the combination of Rome
and Egypt.

"Talk about a grand entrance! She had to smuggle herself into his
presence, so Cleopatra had herself served up to Caesar wrapped inside a
carpet," Gliffy explained.

He smiled at Kate.

“If you want to hook a man, Kate, remember old Cleopatra: wrap yourself
in a carpet!"

“Gliffy, sometimes you are just an ass,” she shot back, grinning to take
the sting out of her words, “but sometimes you simply are an imbecile.”

“It worked, Kate. You can’t argue with success,” Nick said.

“I’m surrounded by twins,” she said, pointing at the sphinxes and then at
Nick and Gliffy.

“Two sphinxes and two
asses.”

Lorenzo started forward to greet several workmen who spilled out of a
truck parked further down the road.

"You mentioned a connection between Cleopatra and this
obelisk?" Nick asked. "What kind of a connection?"

Gliffy rubbed the paw of one of the sphinxes.

"The guy who moved it from Egypt named the steel container he put
the obelisk in Cleopatra, but that's not the connection I meant. Some say that
a curse fell upon this obelisk when Cleopatra committed suicide. Soon after she
was told of the death of her lover, Mark Antony, Cleopatra believed that the
emperor Octavian would take her in chains to Rome and parade her through the
streets.

"She was found dead on a bed of gold, dressed in all her royal
ornaments, with a small but deadly snake called an asp in her hand.

"And that was the end of the Pharaohs.

"Even today, there are more suicides near this obelisk than at any
other point on the Thames River."

He flung his arms wide, hands pointing down the river's bank.

"There have been claims that strange, mocking laughter is heard near
this obelisk but nobody can be seen making it."

He pointed to the base of the obelisk.

"Some people claim they have seen a naked man rush up to the
obelisk, leap upon this base, and then into the water, without any splash being
heard."

Kate shivered.

"It's such a beautiful thing," she protested.

Gliffy nodded in agreement.

"Sometimes beauty hides evil," he said.

Lorenzo and the workers reached the base of the obelisk.

"One last question before you start, Gliffy," Nick said.
"How did this obelisk get here?"

"It was a gift," Gliffy explained. "From a rather
remarkable ruler of Egypt, a fighting Albanian who fought Napoleon."

He was delighted by the astonishment on Nick's face.

"I know! Nothing about obelisks is simple, my friend. You will learn
this. Muhammad Ali was the Ottoman viceroy of Egypt from 1805 to 1849. He was
of Albanian extraction, and fought in battles against Napoleon's army when it
invaded Egypt.He was appointed viceroy
in 1805, and fought successfully against the British in 1807, and then in 1811
he fought off the Mamluks who tried to take over Egypt."

Lorenzo pointed at the obelisk and then at the scanners and finally at
the trees, and the group moved twenty yards down the sidewalk and gazed up into
a large tree.

Kate wandered over to one of the benches further along the embankment and
sat on it, running her hand over the head of the buxom plump-cheeked iron
sphinx which served as the end of the bench and one of its legs.

We have three separate hunts going on, she thought, caressing the head –
the iron was cold to the touch.

All four were hunting for the
solution to the obelisk and its signals.

She was hunting for a solution to the Bug.

Nick was hunting for a way to mobilize ordinary people to fight global
warming.

She enjoyed the company of the Sin Trader, she thought, conscious of a
faint warmth spreading across her face.

Might as well admit it: he was a very interesting man, totally at ease
with himself and with everyone he met.

And then a flutter of panic stirred in her when she thought of those who
were hunting Nick and others at the WorldHeat show.

The caucus had ended, with the workers going back to their truck and the
others coming back to her.

"They'll install the scanners tomorrow," Lorenzo said.
"Our job here is done; now we can go back to Nick's little jet and return
to the civilized world of Venice to pick up some more scanners. I have prepared
the spare bedrooms for you."

"Oops, almost forgot," Gliffy exclaimed, pulling a tabloid
newspaper out of his laptop carrier. "Your Hangman has hit the
press."

He handed the newspaper to Nick, folded open at a short item which told
of threats being sent to Nick's show, with some signed with the figure of a
hangman.

"I wonder if Interpol leaked that," Nick said thoughtfully.
"Not much detail in it, is there?"

Good old King Tut 3
crops up in many more spots in our thriller, Obelisk Seven.

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AMAZON 5-STAR REVIEW!

Like many of Glenn Ashton's other books, this one grabs you right away and doesn't let up until the very end.

The "Euros" will satisfy anyone who is a fan of the Rainbow Six and Private para-military groups fighting off the bad guys. However, they are a bit classier and less super-human, therefore much more believable.

In this case the bad guys are taken from the current headlines and set in both Notre Dame Cathedral and the sewers in Paris. The location is finely crafted and shows an obvious flair for detailed research.

This is a highly enjoyable read but don't expect to just read a bit and then put it down. That won't happen!

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A Save the Cat! worksheet for you to plan your novel’s plotline, including all the Beats of Screenwriter Blake Snyder, plus notes on his method, along with space for you to draft your own plot notes.

A Template (in Microsoft Word) of the Small Steps Plan for drafting your very own Book Promotion Plan, based on my Small Steps to Bigger Book Sales Chapter 25.

The same Template as an Excel program, allowing you to enter your own Small Steps Plan events for the next 12 months.

A Weekly Checklist for monitoring your progress in carrying out your very own Small Steps Plan for promoting your books, with 120 items for you to consider including in your weekly marketing program.

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Authors! This is a Must-have

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The Euros: Notre Dame Point Zero

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The Euros: Notre Dame Point Zero

What is my latest book - The Euros: Notre Dame Point Zero – about?

How would you rescue women and children held hostage in Notre Dame cathedral in Paris by a band of faceless, nameless and ruthless men, who have attached bombs to each hostage, and threaten to blow up the cathedral if their demands are not met?

That is the problem that The Euros face in this, the first book of the series about them.

The Euros is the name for the Euro Protection Bureau, the highly skilled, well trained super cops unit formed to protect the European Union from threats to its integrity.

With five headquarters – the Puzzle House in London, the Grooming House in Paris, the Toy House in Berlin, the Garage in Rome and the Story House in Prague - the PuzzleMaker and Headmaster, directors of the London and Paris HQs, have a limited time to find a way to make themselves invisible so that they may enter the cathedral, rescue the hostages, save the cathedral, and capture the Bad Guys.

As little children are marched to Point Zero in front of the cathedral, with flickering lights on their explosive vests, and the Headmaster is forced to go into the cathedral as a hostage, the PuzzleMaker turns to Knuckles, the leader of the Onsite Prediction Unit, to cast her knucklebones and help him anticipate the actions of the Bad Guys.

He also asks a young gypsy girl to help him, and the Gypsy takes him on a hair-raising trip through the catacombs and sewers of Paris.

Silent Lips - My New York thriller

LittleTown Combo One

The Hooks in our Books

People inside and outside New York race against time to save the city from a genetically engineered virus created by mistake.

While doctors in the ParkLab in Central Park try everything they can think of to find a cure, the Prime Minister of Israel is smuggled into the stricken city to share its fate, and the President makes the most agonizing decision any US president has ever made.

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OBELISK SEVEN:

What is the link between ancient obelisks and a microbe that threatens the world's oil supply? And who is willing to kill to keep the secret?

When Nick Kangles, the wealthy host of aglobal warming TV show, and Kate Stanton, the top notch microbiologist, try to solve the mystery of seven obelisks that aresending out signals, they uncover the countdown of a threat to our civilization.

Kate meets Nick in the square of the Pantheon in Rome, when they share a table to avoid the rain.

He is travelling the world to convert people to fighting global warming by setting up greenhouse gas trading schemes, while she has been called in to helpfind out what is eating the carbon in the massive oil deposit in the Ghawar Field in Saudi Arabia.

Nick and Kate detect signals from obelisks in Rome, Paris, London, New York and Egypt.

They set out on an increasingly dangerous hunt to find the link between these seven obelisks and a new microbe that threatens the world’s oil supply, and discover thatsomeone is willing to kill to keep the link secret.

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THEFT OF SOULS: The Trial of Lawrence of Arabia

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In this play, Lawrence is charged with the theft of the souls of some of the men he led into battle in Arabia during the First World War. To support the charge, the Prosecutor relies upon Lawrence's words in his autobiography The Seven Pillars of Wisdom. General Allenby is also called as a witness.

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